Publications and Studies

The Accords bilatéraux et diversité culturelle newsletter releases a special edition devoted to the 5th anniversary of the Convention

A special edition of the Accords bilatéraux et diversité culturelle newsletter was presented for the 5th anniversary of the Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. This issue is dedicated to the legal and political challenges of implementing the Convention. It discusses the following hot-button issues:

The origins of the Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions:

The advent of cultural exception

The appropriation of cultural diversity

The spread of cultural diversity

Towards the adoption of the Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions

The United States and the bilateral approach: a political way to skirt the Convention on Cultural Diversity.

Issues regarding implementing the Convention:

The relationship between the WTO and the Convention: a deliberately ambivalent issue

The International Fund for Cultural Diversity

Concrete measures in favor of implementing the Convention

This special edition also features an analysis that reveals the following:

"From the WTO Ministerial Conference in Seattle in 1999 until UNESCO's adoption of the International Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (October 2005) and its coming into force, a plethora of stakeholders have sought to defend the cause of cultural diversity by stressing the important role that cultural policies play in protecting and promoting it. Cultural diversity has gradually emerged as a value in international law, and a normative framework has risen up around it with a view to it serving as a mechanism to regulate the trade/culture interface on the international level. On the one hand, it holds a distinctive position in its own right in the Convention, which calls for certain commitments by stakeholders on the international scene. On the other hand, as a normative framework, the Convention tends to give shape to a political context of trade by playing on the force of stances hailing and denouncing it, while engaging stakeholders in a heated negotiation process. The international dimension has since been ubiquitous in the interface between trade and culture and the battle over norms to regulate its management is largely being staged on the international level."

Accords bilatéraux et diversité culturelle is published in French by Centre d'études et d'intégration sur la mondialisation (CEIM), on behalf of the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF).